Cerritos College says farewell to one of the school’s members, Nancy Montgomery.

Montgomery resigned from her position as Cerritos College Health Care Center associate dean to take up a job in Irvine Valley College.

She announced her resignation on Wednesday, Feb. 5 through an e-mail to her staff.

The e-mail Montgomery sent to the staff said, “I have accepted a position at Irvine Valley College again working with healthcare and veterans.”

For seven years Montgomery served the community of Cerritos College by helping students make appointments with counselors and going out to the school athletes and giving speeches on health.

“She was very health conscious,” Daniel Smith, dean of athletics, said. “Health education is my division, so we did a lot of things with the health center.”

Cerritos College offers over 100 health education classes in a year, according to Smith, so working with the health center would help make students aware of health issues.

He didn’t know she left the school health center until two weeks after the Friday when she officially resigned.

“It was very last minute,” Smith said.

“She did come into my office,” he said. “I told her how much we were going to miss her because we had such a great relationship with her back and forth.”

A grant written by Montgomery helped upgrade the equipment in the fitness lab.

“The equipment wasn’t very good. She wrote a grant, I believe to Kaiser, that got us all that knew equipment that made a huge difference.”

Dan Clauss, athletic director, appreciated the support given by Montgomery while she was at Cerritos College.

“She was just so helpful and very in tune with the students. She was one of the administrators that cared everything about the students.”

Not only physical health problems were on Montgomery’s watch, as she also helped out students with psychological problems.

When the football team was struck with the flu virus, Montgomery’s reaction to contain the illness with vaccines for the team helped stop the spread of the flu to other sports programs.

“She was a great neighbor,” Clauss said. “We called her our neighbor.”